For supporting buckles adjacent a vehicle seat or projecting from between the seat cushion and seat back, various support assemblies have been proposed. In the side mounted buckles, webbing stalks of steel strap material have been employed that are effective in supporting and keeping the buckle in a predetermined position for ease of latching with a tongue plate on a seat belt such as in a common three-point seat belt system. In other words, because of the high strength and stiffness of the steel strap, the buckle is substantially rigidly held in position in the area between the seat cushion and seat back or, more typically such as with front bucket seats, adjacent the seat such that a passenger need not hold the buckle housing while inserting the tongue plate therein for buckling or latching operations to occur. However, the downside of such a rigid mounting of the buckle is that should a passenger accidentally start to sit in the area of the buckle, they will feel a very uncomfortable and possibly painful hard, projecting part of the seat belt system. Because there is very little give in the steel buckle positioning strap, the passenger will likely have to get back up for completely repositioning themselves on the vehicle seat.
The use of seat belt webbing material for the buckle supporting stalk is also known. However, the belt webbing buckle anchoring assemblies are more commonly used to extend between the seat backs and seat cushions of vehicle seats such as in a rear bench seating arrangement of a vehicle. In this instance, the webbing does not really support the buckle as instead its weight rests on the seat cushion. Such buckle mounting straps are advantageous in that they do not present a rigid and hard obstacle to a passenger attempting to position themselves for sitting on a vehicle seat due to the flexible nature of the seat belt webbing material. On the other hand, belt webbing buckle positioning members typically require that the passenger hold the buckle to orient the slot opening thereof in an upwardly facing direction for sliding receipt of the tongue plate therein. Thus, these flexible webbing positioning members will generally require a two-handed buckling operation. Further, these webbing buckle mounts generally are not sufficiently stiff for use as a self-supporting buckle stalk to properly position the buckle alongside the seat cushion without incorporating an additional reinforcement member to the assembly.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,645,231 to Takada is directed to a seat belt buckle stalk that employs a seat belt webbing and recognizes the above-noted problem with such seat belt webbing stalks. To solve this problem, the '231 patent teaches folding belt webbing and then placing it in a mold. Plastic is injected into the mold to fill in the gaps between the folded webbing portions to provide it with the stiffness needed to be self-supporting with a buckle attached to the end opposite the anchor. Utilizing a molded plastic material between folded seat belt webbing portions, while generally providing a slight cushioning around the hard plastic material between these folded portions, still creates a rigidity problem. And while possibly more flexible than a steel strap based stalk, the webbing and molded plastic stalk of the '231 patent still will present a relatively rigid mounting of the buckle. Again, while this is beneficial for the buckle latching operation, the rigid stalk creates an impediment for comfortable seating of passengers on the vehicle seats. Further, the manufacture of the '231 patent stalk is relatively complex in requiring a special mold and plastic injection molding operations undesirably increasing costs associated therewith.
Accordingly, there is a need for a positioning member for a buckle component that provides for an optimal combination of stiffness to allow the buckle to stay in a predetermined position and of allowing for shifting of the buckle component upon application of bending forces thereto. More specifically, a buckle component positioning member is desired that allows for one handed buckling operations to occur but does not create a significant impediment to passengers when attempting to positioning themselves for seating on a vehicle seat with which the buckle component is associated.